GitOps with ArgoCD — A Practical Guide to Declarative Deployments
How to set up GitOps with ArgoCD on Kubernetes: repository structure, Application manifests, sync policies, secrets and multi-environment promotion.
Blog
Blog
Notes on software development, cloud and platform work.
Go Microservices Architecture — Patterns That Actually Work
How to structure Go microservices for production. Service boundaries, communication patterns, error propagation, and the tooling that keeps it manageable.
A Test Automation Strategy That Actually Works
The testing pyramid is 15 years old. How to build a test automation strategy for modern microservice architectures — from unit tests to E2E.
Contract Testing for Microservices — Catching Breaks Before Production
How contract testing prevents the integration failures that unit tests miss: Pact, provider-driven contracts, and fitting them into your CI pipeline.
CI/CD Pipelines with GitHub Actions — A Practical Guide
How to build reliable CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions: caching, matrix builds, reusable workflows, security hardening and deployment patterns.
Container Best Practices — Beyond the Basics
Multi-stage builds, image security scanning, size optimization, and local dev workflows. The practical guide to containers that tutorials skip.
AI-Assisted Engineering: The Productivity Paradox Nobody Warns You About
93% of developers use AI tools. Actual productivity gains? Roughly 10%. The bottleneck isn't the code — it's everything around it, and that is fixable.
API Design Patterns — REST, gRPC, and GraphQL in Practice
A practical guide to choosing between REST, gRPC, and GraphQL. Versioning strategies, error handling, and when each pattern actually makes sense.
EU AI Omnibus: They Delayed the Deadline — Don't Celebrate Yet
The European Commission's AI Omnibus pushes high-risk AI rules to late 2027. Why smart teams won't slow down — and what to do with the extra runway.
Platform Engineering Is Mainstream — Now Comes the Hard Part
90% of organizations have a platform initiative. Most are failing. The problem isn't tooling — it's execution, adoption, and measuring what matters.
Go for Backend Development — Why We Bet on It
Why we chose Go as our primary backend language: concurrency, simplicity, deployment — and the hiring factor that settled the argument.
The Monolith Isn't the Enemy
Pushing back on the 'microservices everything' trend. When monoliths work, when to split, and why pragmatic architecture beats dogma.
Kubernetes in Production — What Nobody Tells You
The real challenges of running K8s in prod. Operator fatigue, upgrade nightmares, monitoring gaps, and the cost surprises that hit after the honeymoon phase.
Cloud for the Mid-Market — No Rocket Science
Cloud isn't just for enterprises. A pragmatic guide for mid-sized companies ready to take the first step — and what to settle before they do.
Why Appetizer Labs
What's broken in IT consulting — and why we do things differently. An honest manifesto about consulting that delivers instead of presenting.